The rest is awesome, but that segment has the camera frozen on the French men, and I found their shrill, incomprehensible Frenchiness obnoxious, especially when they were stopping me from seeing the boat in action

Camonk - 2008-10-20 Yeah, more than a quarter of the video is wasted space.

On further investigation, Hydroptère holds the class D world record, at 44.81 kts, but the fastest vessels have been kite surfers and wind surfers since 1986. Hydroptère is in fact the fastest seagoing vessel one could theoretically sail to the race location.

OgreMkIV - 2008-10-20 Sweeeeeet. They have the main sail reefed, so they aren't carrying the full possible sail area. Translation: they probably could have gone faster, but were scared of wiping out. It looked like the helmsman already had a hell of a time keeping the thing under control.

If I remember correctly, they are using modified airliner landing gear for the foil suspension. This boat is way cooler than the stupid Yellow Pages Endeavour, which couldn't actually sail on the open ocean. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Pages_Endeavour